Intuitions about gravity and solidity in great apes: the tubes task

Cacchione, Trix; Call, Josep

doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00881.x

Cited by 23 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Additionally, ghost displays present self-moving objects that appear to defy the laws of physics. Given primates’ understanding of the basics of gravity, motion, and causality on objects1011, decreased learning from ghost displays may reflect confusion about a physically implausible outcome12. Contrastingly, new behavioral and neural data from humans13 has proposed that the presence of a live model enhances memory, and the resultant recall might underlie humans’ increased imitation from socially-modeled events.…”

Section: Introduction and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Models Enhance Apes’ Memory for Novel Events

Howard

Wagner

Woodward

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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Nonhuman primates are more likely to learn from the actions of a social model than a non-social “ghost display”, however the mechanism underlying this effect is still unknown. One possibility is that live models are more engaging, drawing increased attention to social stimuli. However, recent research with humans has suggested that live models fundamentally alter memory, not low-level attention. In the current study, we developed a novel eye-tracking paradigm to disentangle the influence of social context on attention and memory in apes. Tested in two conditions, zoo-housed apes (2 gorillas, 5 chimpanzees) were familiarized to videos of a human hand (social condition) and mechanical claw (non-social condition) constructing a three-block tower. During the memory test, subjects viewed side-by-side pictures of the previously-constructed block tower and a novel block tower. In accordance with looking-time paradigms, increased looking time to the novel block tower was used to measure event memory. Apes evidenced memory for the event featuring a social model, though not for the non-social condition. This effect was not dependent on attention differences to the videos. These findings provide the first evidence that, like humans, social stimuli increase nonhuman primates’ event memory, which may aid in information transmission via social learning.

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Section: Introduction and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Models Enhance Apes’ Memory for Novel Events

Howard

Wagner

Woodward

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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“…In the gravity bias task, tamarin monkeys preferred to search for a dropped object directly beneath the release point even when the trajectory of the object was altered by a tube to another place (Hauser et al, 2001; Hood et al, 1999). The gravity bias in tamarins, unlike in human children or dogs, persisted despite “extensive” training, which lasted several days for each of three phases in total (Cacchione and Call, 2009; Hood et al, 1999). In both the gravity bias task and the maze problem, the problems are spatial; the prepotent actions are to take the shortest Euclidean path (to the ground or to the goal); monkeys are biased even after a certain amount of training.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of maze navigation by tufted capuchins (Cebus apella)

Pan

Kennedy

Pickering

et al. 2011

Behavioural Processes

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Theories of spatial navigation hypothesize that animals use vector or topological information to choose routes, often including detours, to move objects or themselves to goals. We assessed adult capuchin monkeys’ (Cebus apella) navigation through 192 virtual 2-dimensional mazes that incorporated detour problems. Six monkeys initially were significantly less likely to choose the correct paths when detours were required than when not. Three of the six monkeys repeatedly practiced the 192 mazes to asymptotic mastery; the other three did not practice the mazes again. In a subsequent transfer test, each monkey made correct choices equivalently often on familiar and novel mazes, which suggests that they used general planning skills for maze navigation. Of the three monkeys that practiced the 192 maze-set repeatedly, one efficiently detoured and the other two significantly improved detouring compared to their initial performance. Two monkeys, contrary to their performance when completing the 192 maze-set for the first time, made correct choices at the same rate as chimpanzees. Some evidence suggested that two monkeys used topological information, but utilization of vector information was obvious for all monkeys. Our findings suggest that the boundaries of any individual’s navigational abilities are not predicted by species, but depend on experience.

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“…When tested on object-based attention tasks, adult participants fall prey to the limits of this system; people fail to track objects that break apart briefly during motion (Scholl & Pylyshyn, 1999) or fail to cohere (vanMarle & Scholl, 2003). Finally, at least some of these principles seem to guide object reasoning in closely related primates (Cacchione & Call, 2010; Flombaum, Kundey, Santos, & Scholl, 2004; Munakata, Santos, Spelke, Hauser, & O’Reilly, 2001; Santos, 2004). These empirical findings together have been used to argue that object knowledge is one of several early emerging core systems for representing the world (see reviews in Spelke, 2004; Santos & Hood, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The origins of belief representation: Monkeys fail to automatically represent others’ beliefs

Martin

Santos

2014

Cognition

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Young infants’ successful performance on false belief tasks has led several researchers to argue that there may be a core knowledge system for representing the beliefs of other agents, emerging early in human development and constraining automatic belief processing into adulthood. One way to investigate this purported core belief representation system is to examine whether non-human primates share such a system. Although non-human primates have historically performed poorly on false belief tasks that require executive function capacities, little work has explored how primates perform on more automatic measures of belief processing. To get at this issue, we modified Kovács et al. (2010)’s test of automatic belief representation to examine whether one non-human primate species—the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta)—is automatically influenced by another agent’s beliefs when tracking an object’s location. Monkeys saw an event in which a human agent watched an apple move back and forth between two boxes and an outcome in which one box was revealed to be empty. By occluding segments of the apple’s movement from either the monkey or the agent, we manipulated both the monkeys’ belief (true or false) and agent’s belief (true or false) about the final location of the apple. We found that monkeys looked longer at events that violated their own beliefs than at events that were consistent with their beliefs. In contrast to human infants, however, monkeys’ expectations were not influenced by another agent’s beliefs, suggesting that belief representation may be an aspect of core knowledge unique to humans.

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Intuitions about gravity and solidity in great apes: the tubes task

Cited by 23 publications

References 18 publications

Social Models Enhance Apes’ Memory for Novel Events

Social Models Enhance Apes’ Memory for Novel Events

Development of maze navigation by tufted capuchins (Cebus apella)

The origins of belief representation: Monkeys fail to automatically represent others’ beliefs

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